


A Grand Day Out

by Merkwerkee



Category: Masters of the Metaverse (Web Series)
Genre: Hallucinations, dream to nightmare, that thing where psychics trap you in your ideal world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27645277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: Andi has a perfectly lovely lunch with all the perfectly wonderful people she loves best in the world. It all goes perfectly.Nothing is wrong.Nothing at all.





	A Grand Day Out

It was an absolutely gorgeous day.

Andi leaned back and smiled as she felt the sun on her face. It felt so _good_ to just take a load off and relax; no responsibilities waiting for her, no world-shattering consequences if she failed or made the wrong choice. Just her, the sunshine, and her favorite people in the world.

Opening her eyes, she looked out over the assembled group. The first person her eyes landed on was her grandfather, looking more relaxed than she’d ever seen him in a dove-grey sweater vest, button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his elbows, and grey slacks. He caught her glance and smiled back at her for a moment, warmth suffusing his face before he turned his attention back to assembling sandwiches from the ingredients in the picnic basket. It was a large wicker basket lined with a gingham cloth, and with the lid open she could _almost_ make out the various sandwich fixings and treats she knew had been packed inside.

The other two members of their group were already chowing down on sandwiches, sat on the opposite side of the large picnic quilt they’d tossed over the soft green grass. Butch was sat up straight with his legs splayed out in front of him, eating roast beef on sourdough rye with a single-minded intensity, while Abbi had sat herself in his lap and leaned back against him to eat a ham and swiss on ciabatta, only pausing every now and again to remind her husband to make sure his crumbs fell off to the side and not down her back. Andi could feel the easy warmth between the two - a lasting gift from Abbi herself - and knew the complaints weren’t serious.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her grandfather - ex-Marine Bruno Hamilton, career soldier, and badass - leaning over and holding out a sandwich in a napkin. “Here you go, Andi, your favorite,” he said with a twinkle in his eye and she smiled back gratefully as she took it.

One glance was enough to let her know that he hadn’t quite gotten her sandwich right. “Grandpa, I asked for ham and swiss on white, not on rye!” She had to laugh a little as his brow furrowed - it wasn’t the end of the world, she’d still eat it, but it wasn’t her favorite sandwich by any stretch of the imagination.

“Isn’t that what I gave you?” he asked, the puzzled look on his face somehow not darkening his features like she thought it would.

“No, see-” she looked down at the sandwich she held in her hand, and found a perfectly acceptable ham and swiss on white bread. “Huh, guess you did. My eyes must be playing tricks on me.”

“It’s probably the Lunch Lady exercising her sandwich-manipulation powers,” Butch managed to say with a perfectly straight face - an effect somewhat impaired by the immediate fit of giggles that overtook his wife.

“Th-that’s not a real thing and you _know_ it,” she managed between laughs, and the other three had to join in.

For several long moments, laughter rang across the pleasant meadow and drowned out the softly chirping birds and buzzing insects, but eventually the quiet returned. Andi took a considering bite of her sandwich as her grandfather made his own. It was a pretty good sandwich; the ham was smoked to perfection, the cheese still cool and an excellent counterpoint to the saltiness of the ham, and the bread was soft as a cloud. She had to smile as a memory popped into her head.

“Sure beats the hell out of canned bread, right grandpa?” she asked, and he laughed loud and long. 

It was a little weird actually; before now, she’d only ever heard him chuckle with a rusty little laugh that sounded like he didn’t get to use it much - or else with a bitter, sharp laugh that didn’t happen because whatever he’d heard was goddamn _funny_. To hear him belly laugh was definitely weird, but…she could get used to it. The smile when he finally wound down was weird, too. Most of the smiles she’d seen on his face were small, barely there things that looked a bit like he’d forgotten how to do it. Or like his face didn’t move that way, but he was trying to make it work for her.

“What the hell is canned bread? Sounds awful,” said Butch, drawing Andi’s attention away from her grandfather as she nodded forcefully.

“It really, _really_ is. We had to basically eat nothing but for months. Canned bread is just the _worst_ kind of carbs.” Of course, the canned bread had only been the tip of the iceberg when it came to awful things about the time spent in ARENA, and she shivered at the memory of the hollow, empty ache of the severed bond to Abbi.

Something nudged her foot, and she looked up to see Abbi smiling at her gently. “Hey, we’re back now, remember? And we’re never going to leave you again.” Her words had the comforting weight of finality in them, but Andi didn’t feel the rush of warmth she’d expected. It was a little strange to hear Abbi talk about forever, when she came from a world where every day could be your last, where there was always a new villain, where there was always the next threat to beat. Even more than that, their bond had already been severed once, and there was no telling if it would happen again.

Andi was distracted from her growing thoughts by a tap on the arm. “Strawberry?” her grandfather asked as he held out a particularly juicy-looking specimen.

Andi shook her head. “No, strawberries were grandma’s favorite - I was never very fond of them,” she said distractedly, trying to regain her previous chain of thought. “My favorite fruit is-” She looked back over at her grandfather, and the fruit he had in his hand - a clementine.

A thread of suspicion wound its way out of her subconscious.

“Weren’t you just holding a strawberry?”

“Your favorite fruit is a clementine.”

“That’s not what I asked. What happened to the strawberry?”

“You don’t like strawberries, why would we have packed strawberries in the picnic basket?” asked Butch, sounding eminently reasonable.

Andi bit her lip. “But I thought -”

A heavy arm settled around her shoulders. Her grandfather had never been the most physically expressive of men; the only other time he’d touched her like this had been when they were at TOM. He was nearly a foot and some change taller than she was, and when he’d put his arm around her then he’d done it almost gingerly, almost like he was afraid to hurt her - but it had also felt like a bulwark against the world, supporting her, creating a place for just the two of them in a metaverse fraught with danger and strife. It had been too fleeting to really enjoy, but she’d loved every second of it.

This time it felt like a great weight, like his arm around her shoulder was an anchor holding her down, holding her back. This time his grip wasn’t safe, it was suffocating - and the easy way he’d simply grabbed her was almost careless.

“C'mon Andi, aren’t you having fun? What’s one clementine among friends?” he asked, Butch and Abbi nodding sympathetically behind him.

Ice shot through her veins. This wasn’t her grandfather, and those weren’t her friends.

_She had to get out of here._


End file.
